By Ronn Chesmonde

WNY Congressman Chris Lee acknowledged Friday that he was fired from McDonald’s in 1979 because he “made a mistake.” Sources familiar with the mistake say he opened fire in the crowded restaurant where he was employed, killing 22 men, women and children.

Lee, according to his co-workers at the time, somehow obtained a semi-automatic rifle and a sub-machine gun. Then, with a full cache of ammunition, he murdered more than a score of customers after one of them apparently questioned his customer service abilities.

“These unprovoked killings caused McDonald’s to receive incredibly negative publicity,” a former employee said, “and caused heartache for the families of the victims.”
Two people were fired, Lee among them. Others were reprimanded, the former employee said.

Told of the accusation Friday, Lee’s congressional aide Nils Wallin responded with a written statement from Lee: “At my first job out of college, I made a mistake and broke a company policy that prohibited killing customers. I was let go. What’s important is that I learned from that mistake, and now I am looking forward to a mistake-free congressional career that helps to build business and job opportunities for families here in Western New York.”

Alice Kryzan, the woman who ran against Lee in the race for the Congressional seat vacated by Tom Reynolds, told reporters that although she knew about the killings she didn’t mention them because she was doesn’t believe they had any relevance to the issues “that upstate NY residents told me they cared about: jobs and taxes.”

By Frank Brutus

Three members of a nationally-known hate group who had traveled to Buffalo to make their anti-gay views known during the memorial services for victims of the Continental plane crash got more than they bargained for Sunday when hundreds of normally peaceful Western New Yorkers converged on the protesters, dragging them to Frank & Teresa’s Anchor Bar on Main Street where they were deep fried and basted with delicious buttery hot sauce.

“This is just one of those times when you have to stand up and be counted,” said Catholic priest Joseph Engler, still holding the blood-stained shards of a broken baseball bat in his bruised left hand. “In the bible, Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek. But I am pretty sure He wasn’t dealing with these types of @**holes when He said that.”

Representatives from every religious denomination in the Buffalo area, young and old, black and white, turned out to take part in the counter demonstration whose aim was to protect the integrity of the Flight 3407 crash victim memorial services held Sunday in Clarence and at St. Joseph’s Church in Buffalo. Eighty-eight-year-old Kenmore resident Millie Hayes wore a wide smile as she described the actions she took during her first-ever riot. “I hit the fat bastards with my cane and then I looked them straight in the eyes and told them: ‘You’re not in Kansas, anymore.’”

Erie County Sheriff Tim Howard admitted to reporters that he actually participated in the melee. “Normally my guys will act as a buffer between opposing groups, trying to protect everybody’s right to free speech,” said Howard. “But in this case, I just jumped in and started swinging at the Kansas people. My department has no tolerance for this type of intolerance, especially after what we’ve all just gone through in Western New York.”
Employees from the Erie County Health Department were still combing the kitchen area of the popular Buffalo wing restaurant late last night searching for remnants of the three members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, whose leader Frederick Phelps, Sr. professes that the Earth’s homosexuals should be immediately rounded up and transported, at taxpayer expense, to the planet Neptune.

The protesters were deep fried in giant vats of boiling oil until their skin attained a golden crispy color. Their lifeless bodies were then coated with a delicious combination of butter, hot sauce and secret spices know only to the family that founded Buffalo’s most famous chicken wing eatery. The hot, medium and mild remains of each protester were packaged in special Frank & Teresa’s FlavorSeal containers and shipped to the attention of the Rev. Phelps with a note that said, simply, “Thank You. Don’t Come Again!”

By Frank Brutus

An urban designer who focused on neighborhood development in Seattle has been named Buffalo’s new planning chief. Julius R. Weckberg will help lead the city’s effort to revamp 1850s-era zoning codes, Mayor Byron W. Brown announced today. Weckberg, an Amherst native, will be charged with improving a local development process that has been plagued by corruption, graft, incompetence, illegal influence from organized crime and an overall lack of imagination.

A Giddy Mayor

A graduate of the Barbazon School of Beauty who earned a special degree in urban planning from the Fidel Castro College of Progress in Cuba, Weckberg has extensive experience in the public and private sectors, Brown said. The mayor lauded Weckberg’s topographical knowledge of the city of Seattle.

Weckberg’s resume indicates that he worked as an Associate Manager at the SeaTac Airport McDonald’s for seven years and was involved in such projects as Happy Meal promotional planning and ensuring a safe and clean environment in the Ronald McDonald FunRoom. He left McDonald’s in 2003 and returned home to live in his parent’s basement. At that time he found gainful employment as a “senior transport technician” for a local Buffalo company called Alternate Moving Service.

Weckberg promised to encourage “Seattlesque” planning, saying all of the best ideas have already been implemented in Seattle. He cited the now-demolished King Dome as an “absolute gem of architecture that would look great on Buffalo’s waterfront.”

Weckberg will take over from Brendan Brady, the city’s acting director of planning who was arrested and jailed last week after holding up a bank on Buffalo’s West Side. Damone Schneeebley, a well-known unemployed character actor who talked with Weckberg during the search process, said he is impressed with the new director’s “almost violent intensity. This man will not stop talking about what you can actually see from the top of the Space Needle” Schneeebley expects that Weckberg will run into some challenges when he brings that kind of perseverating intensity to meetings with the Buffalo Common Council. “He certainly knows a lot about the Space Needle,” said Schneeebley. “I’m not sure if the city is ready for that kind of project just yet.” Mayor Brown, however, was much more optimistic. “Julius actually helped me move back to Buffalo from Albany when he worked for Alternate Moving Service. He is the perfect fit for Buffalo, a city that has lacked a Space Needle to call its own for over 175 years and counting.”

Larry Flesler - Commentary
• I have become a huge fan of the PGA tour in Tiger’s absence. Watching Mickelson and his sweater-puppies gets me going every Sunday.

• I’ve enjoyed going to the movies with my old pal Van since we both retired. We normally make a day of it. We start at the Scotch and Sirloin at 11am and down a few Dirty Martini’s, and then it’s off to the matinee. We recently viewed ‘Nights in Rodanthe’ with Richard Gere, Van was all over me..

• I recently took up Spanish with the help of a cd learning program. I can now efficiently order a Big Mac at the McDonalds on Niagara Street.

• I miss attending the scouting combine for NFL prospects. Back in the day, Ralph Wilson would point out his favorites while sitting on my lap. I used to scratch his back until he fell asleep.

• I was shocked to hear that A-Rod was on steroids, listening to him speak I would have thought he was on estrogen.

• I’m off my diet of sticks of butter wrapped in bacon. I had a few side effects including bouts of non-stop flatulence and a nervous twitch that simultaneously affected my left breast and middle finger.

• I no longer buy toilet tissue, I have 2 cases of Sham-Wows that work wondrously.

• Marshawn Lynchs’ recent brush with the law reminds me of a few poor choices made when I was a young lad. I used to drink my Aunt’s Mogen David wine while she slept and have my way with her 2 cats.

• I once played stick-ball with Pope John Paul. He was a great athlete and superb at beer pong.

By Frank Brutus

Just look at his 'Six' appeal

Employees at the Rath Building were the first to notice that Erie County Executive Chris Collins had a little extra spring in his step. “He looked taller to me. I wondered if he had started wearing platform shoes,” said Sexually Transmitted Disease Free Testing Clinic Supervisor Barb Brown. Brown’s secretary Beck Truman noticed a difference in Collins, too. “I thought he was using Rogaine because his hair seemed fluffier and shinier.”

And County employees weren’t the only ones who recently noticed something different about Collins. At his recent 40-year High School reunion, former classmates marveled at his current resemblance to the photos that appeared on the page of his Senior Yearbook when he graduated from Buffalo’s now-defunct Future Genius Academy in 1968.

Collins claims that there is nothing different about his appearance, his hair style or his shoes. “I’m the same brilliant and creative Republican that was elected to this office by an overwhelming majority of dim-witted Democratic voters,” says Collins, who added with a smile, “But I can promise you that I’m aging at the same rate as everyone else in Western New York.”

Collins’ closest advisors, however, tell a different story. Some of them admit that the County Executive’s initiation of the ‘Six Sigma’ program in Erie County has fundamentally changed him.

“Ever since Chris started having ‘Six’ he has become more energized and attentive,” says a long-time friend who declined to give her name. “A vibrant and active ‘Six’ life made Chris care more about his appearance and boosted his confidence. The man looks twenty years younger since he started having afternoon ‘Six’ meetings with his closest friends and business associates.”

The ‘Six Sigma’ business model was launched in the late 1960s by a group of Tahitian entrepreneurs who wanted to capitalize on the country’s two major exports: prostitution and the sweet-tasting, red water that flowed naturally in Tahiti’s rivers and streams. The ensuing dual success of Tahitian Treat soda and the availability of attractive young women and men for hire as personal escorts made ‘Six’ workshops a worldwide sensation for leaders in the business world.

But Chris Collins was the first to bring the ‘Six’ trade to Western New York. “Dennis Gorski, Joel Giambra. Those guys were raised in a different era when you couldn’t talk openly about ‘Six,’” explained Collins. “Some of that had to do with their religion. Some with societal attitudes in Buffalo. Luckily, times have changed and it’s easier to have ‘Six’ than ever before.”

Collins continues to deny that his involvement with multiple city, county and state partners in the Western New York ‘Six’ ring that he founded two years ago has anything to do with the lingering stares that he receives from local admirers. “My appearance has more to do with my strong genes and natural selection than with anything connected to my ‘Six’ life,” he maintains.

'BigByronB'

Frank Brutus

A somber Mayor Byron Brown stood on the steps City Hall yesterday to announce that a recent article in a nationally-distrbuted magazine ranking Buffalo as the eighth-most miserable city in America was in fact the result of a series of “fabricated and false electronic communications between Mr. Syaed Ali and Steve Forbes, the editor-in-chief of Forbes Magazine.”

The Mayor, who said that criminal conspiracy charges have been filed against Ali, claimed that a personal e-mail account once belonging to him had been hijacked by the perpetrator and was used in “this reprehensible smear campaign against our city.” The Mayor asked Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson to detail how Buffalo Police had once again raided Ali’s Breckenridge Street home and recovered “literally thousands of malicious and slanderous e-mails, written by Mr. Ali and sent to various world leaders, CEOs, and editors-in-chief of hundreds of well-known and respected magazines, including Buffalo Rising Online.”

In a series of graphic communications between “BigByronB” and the Forbes editor-in-chief, Ali-as-Mayor writes that “I don’t care if Buffalo makes your ‘Miserable’ list under my misguided leadership, Steve. I’m too busy making mad love to my mahogany desk.” In another, the author responds to Forbes’ request to tell him a little about the citizens of Buffalo by claiming that the city is filled with lazy citizens “who don’t shovel their [expletive deleted] sidewalks because it would mean they have to get off their couches for more than 2 minutes.”

Hundreds of additional e-mails to Forbes detail BigByronB’s explicit physical encounters behind closed City Hall doors with aides, security guards, and professional athletes as well as a particularly lurid liaison with local sportscaster Ed Kilgore beneath the President’s desk in the Common Council chambers. Police Chief Gipson says that the e-mail messages sent by Ali were designed to embarrass the Brown administration and paint Buffalo as a “hornet’s nest of misery, sexual perversion and bureaucratic gridlock.” Both the Mayor and Gipson claim that without these electronically distributed lies, Buffalo never would have been placed on the Forbes ‘Miserable’ list. “You don’t need a judge or a jury on this one,” said Gipson. “Mr. Ali is guilty of felonious fabrication with the intent to malign our good city. And unfortunately, he succeeded.” The saddest fact, added the Mayor, is that the experienced editor-in-chief of Forbes bought Ali’s story “hook, line and sinker.”

In a statement released by Steve Forbes, the prominent editor and one-time presidential candidate says that he honestly thought that he was communicating with the real Byron Brown. “Many of the e-mails just went on and on,” writes Forbes. “I’ve met the Mayor and one thing I know for certain is that the man is a droning bore. The e-mails sounded like they came from the Byron Brown I know.” Yet Forbes also stated that the e-mails were only a “small part” of the misery rating index and that Buffalo would have made the list without the fake e-mails from Ali. Concluded Forbes, “I can state now that I look forward to enjoying a colorful conversation with the real Byron Brown, the 8th-most miserable mayor in America!”

My View

Bob Loblaw

We are entering the stretch run of winter but I’m just starting to enjoy it.

There is something about that crunch, crunch sound my boots make when walking in the freshly fallen snow first thing in the morning. Or the noise my 92 year old neighbor’s skull makes when she slips on the ice and it bounces off the concrete as she attempts to retrieve the mail, kind of like a coconut dropped from a four story building.

I enjoy the challenging icy drive to work every morning. I still have my balding tires on my Chrysler Towne Car making it all the more adventuresome. I listen to my ‘Kenny G’ CD and sip from my warm cup of Joe while narrowly missing schoolchildren as they wait for the bus. I may have clipped a few in my day but that’s part of growing up in Western New York.

I remember throwing snow balls at School Buses as a young lad growing up in Tonawanda, I was even able to launch a frozen missle at a neighbor’s picture window, watching it explode on impact. Boy you can really run fast in Moon Boots when you need to. And how many of us kept a snow ball in the freezer until it was as hard as granite waiting for that special moment when you could wing it during a neighborhood snowball fight, crushing your opponents facial bones.

And what about sledding. Chestnut Ridge was great before they roped off areas for the younger kids. I remember getting hopped up on Goebel Beer on the 30 mile drive from Tonawanda. We would grab a sled from the trunk and turn it into a deadly projectile as we whizzed down the hill in a drunken frenzy slamming into the little tykes as they tried to make their way back up the hill. A few broken bones and internal bleeding meant it was a good day.

Winter, my favorite time of year.

Team chairman feels ‘Thunder’ might be “misleading”
By Hardy Astrom

It seems like yesterday that team Chairman Clay Bennett announced that Oklahoma City’s first professional sports team would be called the ‘Thunder.’ Now, the club’s chairman is considering names that might more accurately reflect the essence of the team. Coach P.J. Carlesimo was fired, fans are not showing up for games, and they are presently 21 games out of first in their division with a total of 13 wins. And now more changes may be around the corner.

“It’s important to me that we establish an honest relationship with the fan base we are hoping to build,” a frustrated Bennett said at yesterday’s press conference. “And looking over the current roster, watching us go 13-38 to start, I just don’t feel that we’re very Thunderous just yet. We’re more like a sun shower,” he said.  “Without the rain. ”

Bennett defined the qualities of a team deserving of the ‘Thunder’ moniker.
“You should be afraid of Thunder. There should be an element of fear when Thunder is approaching. So far, only the city of Oklahoma seems to have a sense of dread.”

Asked of other names in the running, Bennett had a short list of weather related potentials.
“The word ‘Drizzle’ comes to mind. It’s not something you fear, but you would at least have to take a course of action to deal with it successfully. At this point our players mildly inconvenience opposing teams. You could beat us with a good pair of intermittent wipers.”

The Oklahoma City ‘Overcast’ and the OK ‘Fine’ are also possibilities.

“Last year their record was 20-62. If it were up to me I’d go with the Oklahoma ‘Breeze’. At least until we get a power forward who can drive to the basket without wincing.”
Bennett had no comment when asked if rumors were true that forward Nick Collision would be called ‘Nick Bump’ in gameday programs.

By Frank Brutus

Picture a once-thriving business strip dotted with the skeletons of burned-out buildings, police sirens that regularly pierce the night, or benches painted with the images of innocent civilians who have become collateral victims in the turf battle between warring drug dealers. Tacky plastic dispensers on some street corners hold explicit flyers that advertise “B” list escort services. Maps direct pedestrians to the nearest hospital. Bus shelters, street lights and even the the drooping trees appear as if they have been repeatedly struck by long-range surface-to-air missiles. Faded and stained banners let visitors know they’re entering a very special district.

These were just some of the visions painted yesterday by graduates of Erie Community College’s Urban Technician program who have volunteered to help “brand” a stretch of Fillmore near Leroy as Buffalo’s “Little Baghdad.” The team of five made ambitious presentations to city officials and organizers of the annual “How Much Worse Can It Get?” neighborhood revitalization competition sponsored by Common Council President David Franczyk.

The students served up dozens of ideas to highlight Fillmore’s image as the region’s “Little Baghdad.” Not only is Fillmore home to every major gang leader on Buffalo’s East Side, but there are also about two dozen abandoned houses on the strip that have been marked as “condemned” by the City’s Regional Blight Task Force.

“It’s easy to make the comparisons of this Buffalo neighborhood to Baghdad. Especially the Baghdad that existed just after Saddam was deposed and the looting and violence went unchecked for weeks,” said student presenter Ronald Churchill. “The way the missiles rained down over the capital, before the Green Zone was built. That Baghdad.”

While some think the “Little Baghdad” theme should be developed along a one-mile stretch from Broadway to William, the design team focused on the smaller area between Main Street and Kensington that, according to Franczyk, evoked a “special sense of hopelessness and terror.”

Murals honoring imprisoned gang members, pavement markers commemorating victims of stray bullets and other amenities could help cultivate Fillmore’s image as a unique district where the rule of law doesn’t seem to apply, students said. Adding Dollar Stores, corner beer vendors and other customer-friendly features like self-serve Lotto machines would also attract visitors and even help promote tourism and gambling.

“It would encourage people to stay longer and linger in the area,” said Urban Technician Dan Brady. “Most visitors to this neighborhood drive through at high rates of speed and would never even contemplate pulling over to see what might be on sale at any of the corner shops. Unless, of course, they’re from the suburbs and come here to buy drugs.”

Local leaders were impressed.

“Where do you start? They’re all such great ideas,” said Parm Washington, president of the Fillmore Businessman’s Association. Washington said event organizers have already helped finance the spray-painting of anti-police graffiti along Fillmore, and they would be eager to continue playing such a role but he stressed that public donations will be “essential to get these proposals off the drawing board and onto Fillmore Avenue.”

Ellicott Council Member Brian Davis, challenging other Council members to step up their support for “Little Baghdad,” presented to Mr. Washington a personal check for $100,000.00. “Don’t cash it until Friday, though,” he said.

The news has been grim in Western New York for virtually anyone seeking a job in the metropolitan area during the past fifty years. But yesterday, a bright spot suddenly shone for thousands of Buffalo’s unemployed. Legions of job-seekers milled around excitedly in a vacant lot adjacent to the Boulevard Mall as they waited to apply for one of the 1,600 immediate openings in the steadily growing field of Leaning On Stationary Signs (L.O.S.S.).

Several factors in the national economy, including the recent credit crisis as well as rampant consumer confusion regarding the simple math skills needed to follow a basic budget, have combined to create an explosion in the L.O.S.S. market. And experts predict that the L.O.S.S. field will continue to grow at a steady pace, particularly in long-suffering markets like Buffalo.

Erie County Executive Chris Collins is optimistic about the area’s potential to become a place where people can count on L.O.S.S. job growth. “I certainly can’t take credit for the surge of L.O.S.S. openings in the area,” said Collins, speaking by telephone from his marble-laden condo in the Florida Keys. “But I can tell you that we’ve followed a systematic approach to take advantage of L.O.S.S. opportunities.” Collins explained that Buffalonians have been experts at L.O.S.S. techniques ever since the Light Rail Rapid Transit project got underway and he says he is “committed to the development of more L.O.S.S. gains.”

“In addressing the County Budget I had hoped to eliminate things that might steer people away from L.O.S.S. but I hope to work with the legislature and the Mayor to expand the market considerably.” Collins added that his proposed 4.8% tax hike can be considered an investment in the L.O.S.S. trade. “Increasing taxes is literally taking money that would normally be frittered away on non-necessities and heat and putting it directly into the hands of L.O.S.S. workers,” said Collins. “That money would in-turn be taxed and pumped back into the local economy. The way I see it, L.O.S.S. as a win-win situation.”

Mayor Brown, speaking from his Snow Removal Command Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, said that L.O.S.S candidates need a positive attitude and an appreciation of Buffalo’s best known qualities. “This is what Buffalo is all about. Embracing the elements and getting out there with the public to let them know the news. This is yet another sign that Buffalo is open for business in the business of Going Out Of Business.” Brown added that the area can look forward to the trend continuing. “In this case, your L.O.S.S. is actually your gain.”

Frank Brutus contributed two words and a comma to this article.